Tragedy at the Tucson Marathon

I have wanted to run a marathon for a few years now and have never been able to work up to it. Now I am not sure that I am still interested in adding ‘running a marathon’ to my list of accomplishments. My change of heart comes from the news of the death of Marc Witkes. Sadly, at this year’s Tucson Marathon, which took place December 10th, Marc Witkes an elite runner from Durango, Colorado went into cardiac arrest and died less than 1/2 mile from the finish line. This is a harsh reminder that putting your body through such a challenge is not an endeavor that should not be taken lightly. I find this very sad and completely terrifying that a young, (he was only 40) perfectly healthy person could just drop dead from pushing their body too far. Since I ran in the marathon relay I actually saw Marc Witkes run by while I was waiting for my friend Jenne Breslin to hand me the baton. This was around mile 8 and he was looking great. At mile 22 he was still keeping up a 6:35 minute/mile pace even with a strong head wind. One of things I find so alarming about the death of Marc Witkes is that he was what I would consider an expert at long distance and extreme endurance races. He had run in several dozen marathons and was a triple Iron Man. Additionally, he was a running columnist for the Durango Herald. If anyone should know how to take care of their body during a race like the Tucson Marathon it should be this man. His death is shocking and tragic.

In more cheerful news, because I could not run in the Tucson marathon this year due to a leg injury, as a consolation I ran in the marathon relay with three other women from Tucson. I had the second leg of the course, which was only 5.5 miles and stuck my non-injured teammates with the longer legs. With very little training (I hadn't even gone running in a week) I managed to average an 8:10 minute/mile pace and overall my team placed third out of all the women's relay teams. We would have placed second except two of my teammates got stuck in traffic and were five minutes late for the baton handoff. In spite of this mishap and the lack of training it was a good showing on our part.

Shameless Self Promotion

Things have been quite busy lately and I have not been working on wedding plans at all, which is part of the reason for my lack of posts since the beginning of November. One of the sources of my diminished free time it that our lab just got upgraded to 'Institute' status. My advisor Carol Barnes, also the institute director, will be getting 10 million dollars as a result of us turning into the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. The dedication ceremony is later today and there was an article in today's Arizona Daily Star along with a picture of me recoding neurons from one of my rats.